


Last of His Kind

by SparklinBurgndy



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 05:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17995394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparklinBurgndy/pseuds/SparklinBurgndy
Summary: He was the last of his kind. . ._______________________________________________________________________________________





	Last of His Kind

The battle was dying. He had gutted what monsters tried to flee past him. A group of Laketown men eyed him nervously. Beorn resumed his man form.

“Peace, men of the Laketown. I am not your enemy.”

The bedraggled lake men stared at him, then forced their eyes away. The few women in the group seemed to have no such problems. 

“Th-thank you for coming to our aide, Lord of the Carrock,” one of the older men stammered, eyes roaming around. Something caught his eye over Beorn’s shoulder. “The fighting of you and your kin swayed the battle, I’m sure of it.”

“I have no kin,” the skinchanger growled, snorting at the man’s flattery. “I am the last--“

Beorn choked on the word. The snort had pulled in more air than normal and as it did, two scents tickled his nose. It should have been impossible to scent them through the stench of troll, orc, and blood. But he smelled skinchangers. Two of them.

The man looked over his shoulder again, eyes confused.

Without waiting for the question, Beorn whirled around. 

There were two skinchangers rushing down the hill. They were young, just barely adults, charging through the scattered fighters, seeming determined to cross ground as quickly as possible. Between them were an elf maid dressed in the manner of the Mirkwood elves and a human maid wearing sorcerer’s robes. The first skinchanger was a young male with white blond hair. Then a riderless warg snarled at him and suddenly the great young man was a great young wolf, his fur as pale as his hair. The second was a young woman with golden plaits swinging to her knees. When her companion fell under the warg, suddenly she was a great, golden she-bear.

He wasn’t the last.

Beorn was running towards them before he knew it, back in bear form when two feet quickly proved too few. The small group ran as if the hounds of hell were after them but showed no fear of the scattered orcs and were happy to destroy them if a group came to be in their way. They were running to something, not away from it.

“There! There it is!” The human woman cried. 

Before them was a strange shimmer in the air and the metallic tang of magic in the air. A portal. They were going to pass through to somewhere else. The golden she-bear stood on her hind legs and looked around. There was a chain around her neck held closed with a large, steel lock. Then she was back in her woman’s form, now naked except for the lock and chain.

“This looks like a great story! Why don’t we stay here?!” the young she-bear asked.

“Are you crazy?! Look at this place!” The elf-maid cried, gesturing to the chaos of the battlefield. 

“I’m sure it doesn’t look like this all the time!” the skinchanger shot back.

“I’m going to taste orc for days!” the wolf skinchanger yelped. “I’m taking the portal to the next story!” He matched deed to word and dove into the liquid shimmer in the air.

“Easy for you to say! You can turn into a beast at home, too!” The she-bear called to his retreating back. 

“We do have to pick new stories to live in,” the elf-maid said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something a bit more . . . . modern?”

The three females paused as Beorn approached. To show he meant no harm, he shifted back into his human form.

“No, I think I like it here,” the she-bear said. She spoke smooth, fluent Westron, unlike himself.

“I didn’t realize high fantasy was your thing, but if it’s what you want . . .” 

The elf maid sheathed her sword and hugged the she-bear around the middle. She muttered something that made the she-bear laugh and the human maid blush. Then the elleth dove into the shimmer and disappeared.

The human maid stared hard at the skinchanger. 

“Blondie, are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Now go on, that portal isn’t going to stay open forever.”

“When we get the Chapter Gates stabilized, I’m going to come visit!”

“Okay! Great! Now go!”

“ . . . are you sure?! You’ll be all alone here!”

“She will not be alone,” Beorn stated.

The human woman looked ready to protest again, but the elleth reached back through the portal, seized her arm and dragged her through it. The shimmer gave one more ripple and disappeared.

The she-bear turned towards Beorn expectantly. The Lord of the Carrock approached her. She was small for a skinchanger. She towered over her companions, but they were a human and an elf. Perhaps her growth had been stunted in childhood. She spoke Westron smoothly, was small, and unusually fair . . . she might have even been a half-breed. It mattered not.

“She called you Blondie?” Beorn said gruffly. “Blondie of the Golden Locks?”

She smiled.

“Blondie is a nickname from my childhood,” she said. “My name is actually Golden Locks.”

He smiled.

“I am Beorn, Lord of the Carrock,” he returned. “Little Golden One, I would have you for my mate.”

Golden Locks looked amused by this, but looked him up and down, was pleased by what she saw, and agreed.

That night they sat by the fire in the Great Hall of Erebor. Dwarves brought them food and drink, but Beorn was eager to be away from here. Not just because he didn’t like dwarves, but also to acquaint himself with his young bride. After eating, Golden Locks opened the back of the padlock around her neck and took out a selection of lock picks. Then she turned her attention to the shackle around his wrist. After several minutes, the rusted thing fell to the hearthstone.

“If you can rid others of chains so easily, why do you wear this one around your neck?” Beorn asked. 

“So others will know to come to me to have them removed,” she answered.

It didn’t make a great deal of sense to him but he didn’t insist she take it off.

They traveled across Mirkwood with the elves, made their way to his house in bear form and Beorn was quite proud of his self control that he managed to show Golden Locks around nearly half of the cottage before taking her in the clean straw of the stable. She was a maiden, but eager and just as lonely as he was. Bear skinchangers didn’t hibernate as such, but they did prefer to spend their winters indoors. It was quite pleasant to spend it as a newlywed with a beautiful young mate. 

He wasn’t the last.

By the time spring came, Golden Locks’ belly was starting to swell. Messengers from Erebor, Mirkwood and Dale, came through occasionally with news of the rebuilt cities. Beorn wasn’t pleased about so many strangers around his pregnant mate, but Golden Locks enjoyed trading stories with visitors, so he held his tongue and indulged her whim. 

Just as the weather was turning, his golden she-bear birthed him two cubs; Blodwyn, dark like her father and Goldwyn, with his mother’s fair hair. The twins nursed and grew all winter, then tumbled out into the bright spring grass like winter denned cubs who had never seen sunlight. 

He wasn’t the last.

Spring brought more travelers. Most went by the Great East Road but a few sought fairer weather further south. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, stories had spread far and wide about the Lord of the Carrock and his golden haired bride. As spring slipped into summer, the first appeared: a bedraggled man with an old collar around his neck, who could become a mountain lion when he chose. Golden Locks steadied the twins in their basket. Without a word, she took out her lock picks and freed the man from the iron collar. Though he hated the chain she wore, Beorn kissed her fiercely. She was a liberator, his little golden one. 

The man blessed her for her work, then told them of others living in hiding across Arda. If the Carrock was safe, he would seek them out and tell them to come here. By Autumn, the first few skinchangers arrived in the valley, seeking the protection of the hero of the Battle of Five Armies, and his beautiful golden haired bride. More continued to arrive until winter set its teeth into the Carrock. By summer, Blodwyn and Goldwyn weren’t the youngest skinchanger cubs in Arda.

Beorn left his bees, taking a lobe of honeycomb back towards the house. Golden Locks sat on the grass, holding Goldwyn by the hand as he took wobbling steps towards some flowers. Blodwyn was trying to stand on her own, but kept getting distracted by the fun of tumbling over.

Beorn pressed the honeycomb to Golden Lock’s lips. She took a bite and hummed in delight. Both cubs instantly forgot their play to try for some of the sticky treat. Their father broke the remainder of the honeycomb apart for them. With his children tumbling in his lap, his mate pressing a honey-sweet kiss to his lips, and a village of skinchangers spread out across the valley below him, Beorn took a moment to marvel at the happiness he thought he would never know again.

He wasn’t the last.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had this weird idea about characters from a different fandom that has been cancelled jumping through portals looking for a new story to settle in. I first thought that Blondie would probably find Beorn very attractive, then thought, well, she'd probably end up being a skinchanger if she jumped into this story. The rest of it just tumbled out, but after literal months of writers' block, I hammered it out.


End file.
